Help! Serpent Starfish Disintergrated!!

[odellous]

HELP! SERPENT STARFISH DISINTERGRATED!! woke up one morning and notice the limbs of my starfish being chewed on my my gobie. didnt know what happened. all parameters seem fine. later on, all of the serpent starfishes were dismantled, missing limbs! 6 all together. heres the kicker. everything else in tank is doing fine. no problems with fish, crabs, snails or shrimp. has this happened to anyone out there?? if so, what was the cause and what did you do? please help.

[Flightpipe]

How, and how long did you acclimate it?

[Elysia]

I would check your salinity as a starting point. Funny things can happen, and together they can throw your salinity out of wack and really hurt your inverts.

[odellous]

i have had them for at least 2 years. the recently purchased brittle starfish are still ok. salinity is @ 1.023, with temp @ 78 degrees. with temp differential, salinity would be around 1.025, which is still within parameters. all other parameters are within range. 0 nitrates and phos. calcium @ 400. alkalinity @ 3.5. dont know what's the deal.

[NeonFish]

Last week I purchased knobby startfish, a few days later my pincushion urchins started dying. I thought the starfish was eating them at first. Two days later the serpant stars arms just fell off. A few ours later it was mush. I'm suspecting some sort of fungus or bacterial outbreak occured.

[odellous]

any idea of what it might be? what are your water parameters?

[AJSTITAN14]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15050274#post15050274 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by odellous
i have had them for at least 2 years. the recently purchased brittle starfish are still ok. salinity is @ 1.023, with temp @ 78 degrees. with temp differential, salinity would be around 1.025, which is still within parameters. all other parameters are within range. 0 nitrates and phos. calcium @ 400. alkalinity @ 3.5. dont know what's the deal.

Probably starved to death. My research on the internet suggests that a lot of stars die of starvation.

[CFranklin25]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15067364#post15067364 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by AJSTITAN14
Probably starved to death. My research on the internet suggests that a lot of stars die of starvation.

I agree, most stars have a very specialized diet in the wild, some will accept prepared some won't.

[dudley moray]

serpant stars are predators if it was trying to eat one of your healthy fish that didn't want to be eaten they may have bit back an injury to the main disk will cause stars to "fall" apart ....also +1 on the specialized diet

[NeonFish]

I doubt that mine starved to death as it was eating regularly. My water parameters were excellent. nitrate 0, nitrite 0, ammonia 0. salinity 1.024. temp 77.8.

I thought perhaps that my RO water system might be at fault, so I purchased water from LFS to eliminate it as a possibility.

The only change to the tank was the addition of the knobby starfish, which died within a week by distintegration. I removed it ASAP but it was too late.

In 3 days urchins were dead on the same day and 2 days later the serpent star.

To have everything die by starvation in the same week seems unlikely.

There are in fact fungus and bacteria that are capable of wiping out echinoderms.

In th future, I will use specialized quarantine tank with UV Sterilization.

[odellous]

i think it has to do with our alkalinity levels. has anyone tested theirs? i went to do a test and realized it had expired. i'm almost positive that might be the culprit.